1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a connector device comprising a male connector and a female connector, and more particularly to a connector device which is so designed that, by turning a base body supporting a male connector with respect to a base body supporting a female connector, the male connector is disconnected from the female connector, to break the high voltage circuit, thereby to ensure safety during maintenance work.
2. Related Art
For instance, an electric panel for a high voltage circuit is designed as follows: When the cover of the electric panel is opened, a male connector secured to the cover is disconnected from a female connector secured to the body of the electric panel, to break the high voltage circuit, so that even if the worker touches the electrode accidentally, he will never get electric shock.
An electric vehicle, which has been highly regarded as a pollution-free vehicle, has a high voltage system for driving the electric motor. Therefore, it is necessary to provide means for preventing the occurrence of an accident that the worker gets electric shock carelessly touching the high voltage system during maintenance.
For this purpose, a conventional electric vehicle is provided with a switch for breaking the high voltage system. The switch is operated before the maintenance work is started. In general, the maintenance work of an electric vehicle is carried out by the specialists; however, sometime it is performed by persons not skilled in the maintenance work. In the latter case, there may be a high possibility that the persons may forget to turn off the switch, thus getting electric shock. Hence, in the case of an electric vehicle, too, it is desirable that the high voltage circuit is provided in the electric panel, and whenever the cover of the electric panel is opened, the high voltage circuit is automatically interrupted.
In the above-described device which breaks the high voltage circuit when the cover of the electric panel is opened, the male connector is mounted on the cover of the electric panel and the female connector on the body of the latter. There-fore, if the positions of the male connector and the female connectors are shifted, it is difficult to smoothly connect those connectors with each other or disconnect them from each other.